


i'll build a wall (give you a ball and chain)

by pourpl



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fix It Fic, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Oneshot, PTSD, Post S8, im just angry, take it and go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-18 07:07:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16990332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pourpl/pseuds/pourpl
Summary: Years later Lance is sitting with his knees buried in delicate green grass, sorting through a handful of flowers when he looks up to find a familiar face. His scar that stretches along his cheek has started to fade, but he looks the same. Even though it's been awhile, conversation falls right back into place.





	i'll build a wall (give you a ball and chain)

**Author's Note:**

> excuse the inaccuracies, i actually only watched 3 eps of s8 before going on my twitter tl and seeing all the spoilers and complaints and feeling like i just needed to write something random. i wrote this all in one stream of consciousness so its gonna be stupid but just like, what the fuck voltron. 
> 
> i cant wait for ao3 to rewrite the entire show better than vld ever could! xoxo see u in 15 years when defenders of tomorrow with leakira comes out

Years later Lance is sitting with his knees buried in delicate green grass, sorting through a handful of flowers when he looks up to find a familiar face. His scar that stretches along his cheek has started to fade, but he looks the same. Even though it's been awhile, conversation falls right back into place.

 

They talk about nothing, but nothing also consists of everything when you fought a war together for five years. When Keith asks Lance how he’s doing, the weight of his tone is baked in the pain of loss and the scars of time. It’s not just a question in passing; it’s real concern that weeps out of Keith’s eyes in an invisible plead, hoping that Lance will say he’s okay but knowing that it’s not true. 

 

Even if it wasn’t for the things they’ve seen, people they’ve killed, cuts and bruises on their backs and the memory of utter loneliness in the vast expanse of space, Lance still lost something bigger than anything Keith can relate to. 

 

Lance doesn’t ask why he hasn’t come to visit the farm in all these years, and Keith doesn’t tell him that he felt like he wasn’t welcome. 

 

Because of course Lance knows why, and of course Keith would have been welcome. 

 

The thing that kept them apart was reality.

 

He knows that seeing any of the paladins is a lesion that spreads like butter in Lance’s chest, and he knows that these years haven’t healed the wounds like many told him they would. 

 

He knows that Lance wakes up dripping with sweat just like him, mind playing an endless reel of the horror’s they have witnessed. He knows that it’s still not the same for both of them.

 

Lance shows Keith around, introducing him to Alteans, identifying flowers on their walk, explaining how he spends his days. Keith talks about his own work, the people he meets, the places he goes. 

 

They banter like they used to; Keith mocking Lance’s markings, Lance mocking Keith’s hair. It’s more light-hearted, their words peppered with learned maturity, dancing around the sensitivities. 

 

Hours turn into days, and Keith finds himself unable to leave. Lance isn’t holding him there himself, of course. But the familiar warmth of being around him keeps Keith there. He missed that feeling. Along with the feeling that he needs to protect Lance at all costs. He knows Lance is fine on his own--he has been operating independently for all these years without a problem. But the shift in Lance’s demeanor when they part for the night only reinforces magnetism that keeps Keith here. 

 

Lance worries that he’s getting addicted to having Keith by his side, feeling like he’s becoming too codependent on someone who has always pushed him away. He isn’t pushing now, but Lance still keeps a tight grip on Keith. Even when they swerve around the topic of the things that plague their minds and break their hearts, it still feels different than when other people avoid it. Because Lance knows that Keith feels it too, and just knowing that he has experienced the same things makes him feel that much better when they’re together. They watch countless sunsets, arms draped over knees, comfortable silence hanging in the air, nowhere to go and nothing to say. 

 

One night the silence builds up, and when Lance startles from a nightmare that simply replays Allura leaving him on repeat, he knows he has to talk about it. When Keith sees him peek through the door with a pillow in hand and a shadow cast around his eyes, he knows too. 

 

They sit on Keith’s bed, skulls pressed against the headboard, legs crossed and knees touching, finally addressing what has been hidden between the lines of all of their conversations. Lance’s words don’t come easy, and he has to pause to catch his staggered breath every few sentences, choking on his own sorrow. Keith listens, and although he doesn’t consciously know what to say, he surprises both of them when it comes out of him naturally. There’s nothing he can do to fix it, but he does everything in his power to try and get it across how much he cares. Even before Keith showed up weeks before, Lance knew that. But the reminder helps Lance find sleep again, curled around Keith, holding on and steadying his respiration until they both fall away. 

 

It’s unspoken, but from that point forward they say decide to say what they want to, when they want to, and decide not to worry about it being too real, or too serious. 

 

It’s unspoken, but every night they fall into the same bed, unable to spend any time apart anymore, worried that their nightmares will catch up with them and they will be too afraid to do anything else but fight it alone. 

 

It’s unspoken, but each time one of them is overwhelmed by the past, the other is there, clutching limbs to limbs and cheek to cheek, coaxing their breath into unison. 

 

It’s unspoken, but neither questions it when tears are dried by cracked lips and fears are smothered by soft declarations of affection. 

 

Keith finds himself breaking the first of these unwritten rules, though, stifling his worries about being too much for Lance, forcing him to love too soon and too fast, acting as a stand in for something he craves that Keith will never be able to give him. 

 

He doesn’t remind Lance that he isn’t Allura. 

 

He could have seen it coming when it falls into the typical transgression of pushing Lance away, dead-set on accomplishing it before Lance realizes that Keith is just a warm body, there as an understudy, and he was simply confusing desperation with affliction. 

 

But when this ideation is unspoken as well, Lance sees it as not being good enough for him, just as he felt with Allura. Just when he thought his heart couldn’t be more shattered, he watches a rift form that leaves the bed cold and bodies starved. 

 

They both have been starved before, but one does not know true longing before they have felt something real. 

 

Communication was never their strong point, but it is almost their downfall before a particularly vivid midnight recollection sends Lance reeling, pleading for Keith’s arms and spouting out words that are honest but frightening for the both of them. 

 

But Keith, ever impulsive and reckless, sets aside the ailment of the unknown and holds Lance close. He strokes his fingers up and down his back. He whispers nonsense into his hair. He tangles himself in the warmth of a thousand memories, letting the good ones infect him. They are a reminder of the past, a glimpse of the future, and an indicator of the present when their lips find each other; desperate, soft, tepid, and saturated in convictions. The most mutual and prominent one being the fact that this has been building up since the day they met, and their endgame was undeniably inevitable.

 

**Author's Note:**

> now more than ever, we have to write fics. klance will never die. i will probably be writing more now that i have 10,000 ideas for how voltron could have been written better. heck, literally ANYTHING COULD HAVE MADE IT BETTER. aLITERAL BLIND CHIMPANZEE COULD HAVE WRITTEN A SHOW BETTER THAN THIS JFC ! 
> 
> my twit is @mermsita if u wanna complain with me further thx bye


End file.
